Come Follow Me: (otsukaresama) (thank you, hard worker etc.)

February 8, 2016

こんにちは家族と友達！Hello Family and Friends,
Sounds like a good week! Chad, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Hope it's a good day, love you favorite brother in law.

Hope the family treats you well for your special day. Sunday dinner looked good and yummy as always! I'm glad all is well, everyone is for growing up and changing so fast it's crazy. But keep being great! Stay safe and healthy! This won't be as long this week, gomen! It was just an interesting week for sure.. Well this week was a busy and hard week for dendo in Izumo. We were gone a lot so we were unable to meet with a lot of people sadly.. But we still had some great miracles happen of course. First miracle was our Filipina with a baptism date FINALLY got her work changed and can come to at least sacrament every week. It is a HUGE miracle, we have budge. We asked her if she had told him why she needed it changed and she said no so she told him she needed to go to church and he switched it to later in the day so she can come to at least part of it, YAY!! When we asked her after how it was she said, it's been awhile and I forgot the feeling I get here. It's so different here then anywhere else. That is the best thing to hear. She is so ready for baptism, a few weeks!! So this week at Ekaiwa we had a miracle/amazing class. We had 5 new students. Two which afterwards talk to us after and wanted to learn about the gospel. Except one of them was GOLDEN and she will be so amazing to teach. We were teaching her after and she reads the bible and prays everyday. She loves Jesus Christ and his atonement. She wants to come to church and took a Book of Mormon and said lets meet soon next week. Ahhh... Golden. She is fluent in Japanese, English, and Tagalog. She has so much faith and we are so excited to start trenching her. So yes another Filipina on our life ha and Ekaiwa does wonders for our missionary work. So the reason we weren't in Izumo a lot this week was because we had zone meeting in Okayama and right after we had a kokkan (companion exchange) with the STL's there so we stayed in Okayama from Thursday till Saturday. So one of our STL's is Japanese and guess who got her? ME! I was so happy it was so fun getting to do dendo with a full Japanese person for a day and a half. I spoke Japanese all day and it was great! My brain wanted to explode but it was such an amazing/learning experience. Fun experience of the week, we went to lunch with a less active at her favorite sushi place and while we were there we told her to pick out sushi for us to try and she chose horse meat (yes raw) and the other one was a WHOLE shrimp just dried basically and you eat the whole thing... Eyes, brain, legs, shell, etc. IT WAS NASTY! Well wait, I loved the horse but shrimp was just not right, enjoy the picture For the thought and commitment of the week is from a quote I found this week because I've been striving to improve my prayers and make them as my investigators, they just know he is listening and are having a conversation with Him. "Sincere prayer is the heart of a happy and productive life. Prayer strengthens faith. Prayer is the preparation for miracles. Prayer opens the door to eternal happiness. The Father of us all is personal, ever waiting to hear from us, as any loving father would his children. To learn to communicate with him, to learn to pray effectively, requires diligence and dedication and desire on our part. I wonder sometimes if we are willing to pay the price for an answer from the Lord. "As we learn to develop this two-way communication, the standard of our life will improve. We will see things more clearly, we will try harder to do better, we will see the real joy that can come through trials and testing. Although problems will still be with us, peace, contentment, and true happiness will be ours in abundance. So I just want to ask you all to evaluate your prayers, are you putting forth that effort and paying the price when you talk to Him? If not, change it. Repent and change! I know that prayer is real, we can talk to him about ANYTHING. No matter what we are going through, struggling with, questioning etc. he will listen. I have felt him answer and listen to me even about the littlest things, even being so cold and just needing a little warmth so I can keep biking. He loves all of us and wants us to TALK with him, not repeat things we have learned our whole life. Please change that if needed. It'll change your life and your relationship with Him. I know this is true. I love being a missionary, I love you all, and miss ya lots!! Keep being member missionaries please and help someone come into Christ and have that joy we have. If something is that good, why would we not share it right? Love you all! 愛してますよ！#RELY #PRAY
スミス姉妹